The Discipline of Baptized Members - The Master's Trumpet

The Reformed have historically identified three marks of the visible Church: first, the preaching of the true Apostolic doctrine of the Gospel; second, the administration of the two sacraments appointed by Christ; third, the Biblical government and discipline of the Church. Church members are under its discipline, but a related area of confusion concerns how baptized members, who have not yet communed at the Lord’s table, stand in relation to Church discipline. How should a Kirk Session deal with a baptized member who has grown up in the Church but fallen into sin and turned their back on the means of grace and pastoral care?

Most Reformed Churches have helpful books of Church order, but few of them address this specific case, leaving local sessions unsure how to proceed, or wondering if indeed they should act at all. This problem is not new; Presbyterian and Continental Reformed Churches have wrestled with the matter since the sixteenth century and have laid down helpful principles and practices along the way. At the same time, there has been a lack of consensus, and the question has been vigorously debated in both traditions, largely over the same points.

The Question Stated

The specific question we address is, should baptized non-communicant Church members be subject to the formal discipline of the Church, up to and including excommunication? This question naturally raises others, such as: At what age might a formal process of discipline become relevant? What sins might formal discipline be initiated for? How can someone be excommunicated if they have not communicated at the Lord’s Table? Some of these will be addressed as we proceed, but the chief issue under consideration is the validity of the formal discipline of baptized members.

Related Issues

Children are not recognized as Church members in Baptist and Evangelical congregations, and so what we are considering is a distinctly Reformed and Presbyterian issue. This highlights the fact that our subject is not merely one of Church order, but it is a theological question.

A Question of Covenant Theology

The discipline of baptized church members is ultimately a question of how we see them covenanted to Christ in His Church. When we baptize and apply the sign of God’s covenant to our children, we recognize them as members of the visible Church and kingdom of Christ, and included in God’s Covenant of Grace.¹ This was their status in the Old Testament where God said to Abraham, (Gen. 17:7). “And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee.” The same promise is reiterated in the New Testament, “For the promise is unto you and your children, and to all who are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call” (Acts 2:39). So the Westminster Confession of Faith, in its codification of the doctrine of the Church, states:

The visible Church, which is also catholic or universal under the Gospel (not confined to one nation, as before under the law), consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion; and of their children: and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.²

This covenant status brings the children of the Church under privileges, responsibilities, and sanctions. God has covenanted to be their God, and they live under His covenant promises, but they can come short of them (Heb. 4:1-2). They can break the covenant and bring down its sanctions on themselves. As their covenant status is inextricably linked to their membership of the visible Church, the discipline of the visible Church then bears upon this relation.

The Relation Between the Church and the Family

The Church of Christ is made up of individuals to whom God chooses to administer His covenant, with the inclusion of families. There is thus a potential tension between parental and Church authority. This has been exacerbated more recently in the Family Integrated Church Movement,³ where a renewed emphasis on the importance of the Christian family in the Church and its authority may ironically have had the practical effect of disintegrating the family and Church authority.⁴ It is important therefore to recognize that God has instituted the Church and the family with their own distinct jurisdiction and government. In the family, God has given parents authority to instruct their children and to discipline them with rod of correction (Eph. 6:4; Prov. 22:15; 29:15). In the Church, God has given elders authority to instruct her members and to discipline them with the keys of the kingdom (Heb. 13:17; Matt. 16:18; 18-17-18). One helpful way to think of this distinct jurisdiction in relation to our question is that it was the Church, by its authority, that baptized the children into membership, not the parents. This authority has ongoing relevance in the baptized member’s life.

The Nature of Church Discipline

As we work through the historical debates over the discipline of baptized members, we will see that lines were drawn around different understandings of what the Church is and what her discipline is. Some saw the Church more in terms of a voluntary society, and therefore only those who voluntarily commit to her by profession of faith are under her formal discipline. This group also tended to define excommunication in narrow terms in relation to the Lord’s Table, arguing that if a person had not communicated at the Lord’s Table they could not be excommunicated. Others rejected the voluntary view of the Church and considered it as the sovereignly constituted covenant people of God. From here, they considered all who God included in Church membership to be under her whole discipline, and they viewed excommunication not only as a cutting off from the Lord’s Table, but as a removal from the visible Church.

Historical Review

There is not a lot of Scriptural data that explicitly addresses our subject, but if we first enquire of the practice of the Old Testament Church, it is clear that the circumcised youth were under covenant discipline. In Deut. 21:18-21, a rebellious son was taken by his parents to the elders in the gate who, upon finding him guilty, executed a judicial sentence that removed him from the covenant people by death. We might ask if this has any bearing on the formal discipline of baptized children today?

Moving into the New Testament, we discover a continuation of the Old Testament covenantal principle of household inclusion in the Church. We do not, however, find a specific example of the formal discipline of a baptized non-communing member. However, when Paul wrote to the Church in a certain place, e.g., Ephesus or Colossae, he included the children as part of the congregation and placed the responsibility of obedience as much on them as other members (Eph. 6:1ff). In Corinth, where there was a case of Church discipline for immorality in the congregation (1 Cor. 5), Paul goes on to address the covenant status of children in the same Epistle as ‘holy’, or set apart to God (1 Cor 7:14). While this does not constitute an example of formal discipline of a non-communing baptized member, it does provide a New Testament theology of who is a member of the Church from which individuals are being cut off.

Early Church and the Reformation Period

Moving into the post-apostolic history of the Church, we find evidence that the early Church exercised a disciplinary care over her baptized children. An 1812 Committee report to the U.S. Presbyterian General Assembly on the Church’s relation to her baptized children⁵ records:

The Primitive Church considered herself as the common mother of all baptized children and exercised a corresponding care over them, that they might be trained up as a generation to serve the Lord.⁶

The report goes on to demonstrate that discipline was applied to baptized members for delinquent behaviour and cites Augustine in the fourth century on the matter.⁷ Augustine speaks of “stripes,” being used, not only by parents, but by bishops in their consistories also.⁸ Two centuries later, one of the rules of Isidore of Seville was that baptized members who were still in their minority “should not be punished by excommunication, but according to the quality of their negligence or offence, be corrected with congruous stripes.”⁹ It appears from these examples that children in their minority were disciplined corporally, and when out of their minority they would be subject to a formal process that could lead to excommunication. While we believe that such corporal discipline of children by the Church is a confusion of the jurisdiction of the parent into whose hand God has put the rod, what is apparent here is a clear recognition in these cases that the Church had authority over all of her baptized children.

Moving forward to the sixteenth century, the Reformed Church was also conscious that her baptized children were under her care. W. van’t Spijker¹⁰ has written a helpful article from a Dutch Reformed perspective which highlights the views of some key individuals. He begins with Martin Bucer, who instructed young children in a catechism on the nature of Church discipline and their relation to it. After teaching them that the keys of the kingdom are in the hands of Church officers and are to be used “to warn against and punish sins, to bind and excommunicate those who refuse to repent” and “to loose and in grace receive those who desire to repent,” he asks the child:

What am I to learn from this?

1. To readily allow myself to be warned and punished;
2. To readily warn my neighbour;
3. To value highly, and diligently make use of Church discipline and comfort.¹¹

Van’t Spijker then considers John à Lasco (1499-1560) and Martin Micron (1523-59) who together ministered to the Dutch Refugee congregations in London in the mid-sixteenth century. À Lasco drafted a book of Church order and Micron later described their practice of discipline in his work Christian Ordinances:¹²

When they have reached the age of (around) 14 years and have not been taught sufficiently the principles of the Christian life or they live licentiously, and they despise the private admonitions of the brethren, then the ministers shall admonish and rebuke them in the light of the Word of God. The ministers also shall investigate the cause of their ignorance or licentiousness with the purpose to lead them to a godly life. If it appears that the parents are in part to be blamed for their children’s licentiousness, then they shall first be admonished. If the parents despise these admonitions, then they shall be rebuked for their gross sin in accordance with Christian order and discipline. If, however, it appears that the children alone are to be blamed and not the parents, then one shall comfort the parents and consult with them as to how the unruliness of the children can best be curbed. In the meantime, the ministers of the Word shall reprimand and rebuke (though with wisdom) these children by impressing upon them the divine threats. If nevertheless in this way they do not mend their ways, then they shall not be admitted to the use of the Lord’s Supper until they shall have come to repentance. If despite keeping them from the Lord’s Supper and rebuking them, some one among these children is not touched but rather continues in all wickedness to despise his parents (which sin in accordance with God’s ordinance ought to be punished with death), then when he will have reached the age of 18 or 20, he will be excommunicated from the congregation as a despiser of the grace and of the covenant of God, and the congregation shall grieve over him for following the world. From the excommunication of such children, one can learn that it is not sufficient to have received the seal of the covenant, baptism, in our young years. We dishonour Christ while having his Name on our forehead, unless our life is in accordance with His Name.¹³

So, baptized children were under the oversight of the Church elders who exercised care alongside their parents and as a help to them. If parental correction was rejected, the minister and elders rebuked the baptized youth directly, and if he did not repent, he was formally disciplined. Deut. 21:18-21 was appealed to as a relevant Scriptural text, and excommunication was “from the congregation as a despiser of the grace and covenant of God.”

Debates in the Dutch Reformed Churches

The Refugee Church procedure was clear, but later in the same century, a question was asked to the first Synod of Dordt in 1578,¹⁴ “Are children who have been baptized in the Reformed congregation, when they have reached years of discretion, subject to Church discipline, and will those who, after they have been admonished, continue to harden their hearts be excommunicated, although they have not yet professed their faith and have not yet partaken of the Lord’s Supper?”¹⁵ The answer of the Synod was different to that of the Refugees. Now it was viewed that baptized members should be admonished in general in the public preaching, but that excommunication should only be used against those “to whom the covenant of God had been sealed in their participation in the Lord’s Supper.”¹⁶ À Lasco’s position was rejected, and moving into the seventeenth century, Gisbertus Voetius (1588-1676) was influential in consolidating the view of the 1578 Synod. Voetius considered baptized children as incomplete Church members, who as such, were under Church discipline only as it pertained to nurture, and therefore not the subjects of excommunication. The reason he gave for this was that they had not voluntarily or consciously entered the congregation of believers.¹⁷

Jacobus Koelman (1632-95) disagreed with Voetius’ position and believed it to be contrary to the ‘Form of Baptism’,¹⁸ which declared baptized children to be sanctified in Christ and members of the Church. For Koelman, their inclusion in the Church brought with it the obligation to live in obedience to God as members of the covenant, so he argued if they go delinquent, they are to be removed from the Church and regarded as publicans. Furthermore, he challenged the idea that baptized members were only under the discipline of nurture by asking on what basis did the Church have the right to discipline by admonition but not to excommunicate.¹⁹

So a difference of opinion on our question arose early in the history of the Dutch Reformed Churches in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The same difference of opinion was later found in the Secession churches²⁰ in the nineteenth century. Hendrik de Cock, like Koelman, considered Church Membership to be based on God’s promise, and therefore baptized children were considered members because they were included in this promise, though it may or may not have been graciously applied to their hearts. As members, they were therefore subject to Church discipline, including excommunication. H. P. Scholte looked at the issue more narrowly like Voetius and denied formal discipline should be applied. In 1857, the issue came to the Synod,²¹ who refused to lay down any specific rules on the matter.²²

After the union of 1892, the Gereformerdeerde Kerken²³ looked into the matter, and in 1896, a report was submitted which took Voetius’ position. In 1925, the Christelijke Gereformeerde Kerken addressed the subject and adopted a procedure to be followed.²⁴ Some of the key features of this report are summarized below:

It is agreed in principle that baptized members are under the discipline of the Church.
This discipline is to be applied in different ways at different stages, i.e., to members under 16, between 16-21 and over 21 years old.
Members under the age of 16 should only be admonished. Over 16 they become subject to formal process.
While arguing for liability to formal process, the procedure stops short of using the language of excommunication.
However, the end of the process is a public pronouncement that the person no longer belongs to the Church.

Debates in the Presbyterian Tradition

The debates in the Presbyterian tradition have revolved around the same issues to those of their continental brothers, but the question seems to have arisen later, with most of the discussion taking place in the nineteenth century. We have already seen that the Westminster Confession of Faith views the children of believers as members of the visible Church. This is affirmed in the Assembly’s Directory of Public Worship in the Form of Baptism:

The promise is made to believers and their seed; and that the seed and posterity of the faithful, born within the church, have, by their birth, interest in the covenant, and right to the seal of it, and to the outward privileges of the church, under the gospel, no less than the children of Abraham in the time of the Old Testament…… That children, by baptism, are solemnly received into the bosom of the visible church, distinguished from the world, and them that are without, and united with believers; and that all who are baptized in the name of Christ, do renounce, and by their baptism are bound to fight against the devil, the world, and the flesh: That they are Christians, and federally holy before baptism, and therefore are they baptized:²⁵

In her General Assembly of 1642, the Church of Scotland decreed: “Every Presbytery is enjoined to proceed against non-communing members.”²⁶ There does not appear to be any reference to the age this process would be relevant from, but Steuart of Pardovan, writing in the early 1700’s, records that male children over the age of fourteen were judged to be out of their minority and could be summoned before the Church judicatories and charged with offences.²⁷

Moving to America, the 1789 Book of Discipline of the Presbyterian Church addresses the question of baptized members and discipline in these words:

All baptized persons are members of the church, are under its care, and subject to its government and discipline; and when they have arrived at the years of discretion, they are bound to perform all the duties of church members.²⁸

The first query raised concerning this was brought to the 1798 General Assembly, who answered that the statement was clear on the matter.²⁹ Questions arose again about a decade later. In 1811, the Synod of Kentucky submitted an overture to the General Assembly asking:

What steps should the church take with baptized youth, not in communion, but arrived at the age of maturity, should such youth prove disorderly or contumacious?³⁰

The Assembly appointed a Committee of three men – Dr. Samuel Miller, Rev. W. B. Romeyn, and Rev. James B. Richards – to prepare a report for the next General Assembly. The report, which was largely the work of Romeyn, was submitted to the 1812 General Assembly, who ordered it to be published and sent down to presbyteries for consideration. Several presbyteries reported their views to the 1814 Assembly, where it was discussed in a number of sessions, but on the final day, “the subject was indefinitely postponed.”³¹ The matter was left as it was in the documents of the Church.

The report runs to around forty pages, and the argument proceeds first by establishing from Scripture and the Reformed Confessions that children stand in relation to the Church as members. Because they are members of the Church, they are subject to Christian discipline – just as children are subject to the rule of the house, so baptized members are subject to the rule of the Church. Discipline is then broken up into its two component parts of instruction and correction which are treated in turn, with the duty of the Church to instruct her baptized children comprising the largest section in the report. The duty of the Church to administer discipline to her baptized Children is addressed next, and here the image we saw in the early Church, of the Church as the mother of all her baptized members, is invoked. It is then argued that the administration of such discipline is a duty that lies on all those in ecclesiastical authority, and a privilege for all those under it, and this applies to all three aspects of discipline – admonition, suspension and excommunication. Appeal is made to the practice of the Old Testament Church of admitting its circumcised youth to the full responsibilities of membership at the age of thirteen when they became a ‘son of the commandment,’³² which implied they would then bear personal responsibility to perform all the duties of covenant membership. Argument is also made from Genesis 17:14, which refers to cutting off members of the covenant, and the report notes that this was formal discipline for the stated purpose of breaking God’s Covenant. From this it is urged that if baptized members do not fulfil the duties of Church membership when they come of age, then they should be excommunicated. As the chief duty of their membership is to exercise faith in Christ as Saviour, it is reasoned that failure to believe and profess this faith should make them liable to excommunication.

It is not our intention here to discuss the propriety of this conclusion (this enters into the question of what a baptized member might be disciplined for), but simply to note that the report clearly acknowledged that baptized members are under the Church’s formal discipline and can be excommunicated.

The Revised Book of Discipline

Discussion of the 1812 report was indefinitely postponed by the 1814 General Assembly, and the matter was left as it was stated in the book of discipline. Four decades later,³³ controversy arose when a Committee was appointed in 1857 to revise the Book of Discipline. Included in the membership of this committee were Charles Hodge and Dr. Robert J. Breckinridge, with James Henley Thornwell appointed chairman. When their work was circulated around the Church, a number of proposed changes were met with varying degrees of opposition, but the most fiercely contested issue was the proposed change to the paragraph on baptized members. The revised book recast the original statement as follows:

All baptized persons, being members of the church, are under its government and training, and when they have arrived at years of discretion, they are bound to perform all the duties of members. Only those, however, who have made a profession of faith in Christ, are proper subjects of judicial prosecution.³⁴

Here the word discipline was replaced with training, and the formal process of discipline was now to be reserved only for communicant members. Thornwell, as chairman of the committee, was active in defence of the proposed changes against its critics. Some of these were found in the committee itself, with Charles Hodge publicising his disagreement with the new statement.³⁵ R. L. Dabney was prominent among the critics in the wider Church, and he and Thornwell debated the change,³⁶ with Thornwell defending his position in the Southern Presbyterian Review.³⁷ Many other articles appeared in Presbyterian periodicals, including an ongoing seven-month debate in the Central Presbyterian between Rev. George D. Armstrong and a writer calling himself ‘Old School.’ Armstrong rejected the idea that non-communing members could be subject to judicial process and excommunication, while Old School defended the older Book of Discipline.³⁸ The Baptists chimed in too, with one article in the Richmond Herald noting the revision was “a manifest departure from Presbyterian Pedo-baptism of the Old School.”³⁹ This would not have allayed the fears of many who thought the changes were moving the Church to a more Baptistic view of Church membership.

In the end, the revisions to the Book of Discipline did not go through. Larger events took over that would split the Church in 1861 into its Northern and Southern bodies. The Northern Church reverted to the position of the original book of order, while Thornwell’s view prevailed in the South into the 20th century; but in that century, conservative Presbyterian churches were to revert to the position of the older Book of Discipline. The ‘Book of Order’ of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) states: “All baptized persons, being members of the Church are subject to its discipline and entitled to the benefits thereof.”⁴⁰ The Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) is more precise in specifying the inclusion of baptized members in the judicial discipline of the Church: “All members of the church, both communicants and those who are members by virtue of baptism only, are under the care of the church, and subject to ecclesiastical discipline, including administrative and judicial discipline.”⁴¹ The Presbyterian Reformed Church (PRC) includes a statement directly from the original 1789 Constitution and book of order: “Inasmuch as all baptized persons are members of the church, they are under its care, and subject to its government and discipline.”⁴²

The Main Views

From the history we have considered, two main views on the relation of baptized members to the discipline of the Church emerge – one that sees the applicability of formal discipline to all members of the church, and the other that reserves such discipline exclusively for communicant members. There are of course various nuanced positions within both these views, but what we want to do now is to look more closely at each position and make the case that baptized children are under the discipline of the Church and subject to formal process up to, and including, excommunication. We will proceed by first looking at the arguments against this view and then answer each of these in turn, as a means of establishing our case.

Arguments Against the Formal Discipline of Baptized Members

We introduced some of these earlier when looking at the history of the Dutch Church and did not rehearse them again when working through our Presbyterian history. They are summarized below under six key points.

1. The Church is a Voluntary Society.

In the seventeenth century, Voetius articulated this view. He wrote at a time when the ‘Independentists’⁴³ were pressing their conviction that the holiness of the Church demanded a membership based on the choice of faith. While Voetius opposed their view and argued from the doctrine of the covenant that baptized children were members of the Church, he saw this as membership in an incomplete sense. As a consequence, Voetius argued they could not be formally disciplined because they had not consciously entered the fellowship of believers.⁴⁴ In the U.S.A., Thornwell too saw the Church as a voluntary society with voluntary assent of its members necessary for their discipline. Peter Wallace comments on Thornwell’s position: “The Thornwellian view assumed a theory of republicanism that insisted upon the consent of the governed – or in this case, the consent of the disciplined.”⁴⁵ So the argument here is that if the baptized member has not voluntarily professed his or her faith, then the Church cannot make him or her the subject of formal discipline.⁴⁶

2. Baptized Members do not have all the Privileges of Church Membership.

All sides of the debate agree to this in principle. For instance, baptized members are not automatically given a right to the Lord’s Table,⁴⁷ nor can they hold office in the Church, or, if still in their minority, vote to elect office bearers. Some however press this further to conclude that liability to formal process is another of the aspects of Church membership that baptized members do not have a right to. There is certainly force in the logic of the argument – if baptism does not immediately entitle to all the privileges of Church membership, then it is not automatic that baptized members should be deemed liable to formal disciplinary process.

3. Church Discipline requires Spiritual Life in the one being Disciplined.

Thornwell stated the position in this way: “Church Discipline is for the living and not for the dead.”⁴⁸ Therefore evidence of life, asserted in a profession of faith, was a condition of being under the discipline of the Church. For Thornwell, “To those who profess no faith in Christ, it is as unmeaning and absurd to dispense the spiritual censures of the Church as it would be to tie a dead man to the whipping post and chastise him with rods.”⁴⁹

4. The Purpose of Church Discipline.

Thornwell and others make a presumption of regeneration, expressed in profession of faith to be the condition of Church discipline. It follows that they view the purpose of Church discipline in only corrective and restorative terms. Yet, discipline is established to glorify Christ, clear the good name of the Church, recover the offender, and warn the other members of the Church. However, it is never a means to awaken the dead in conversion.⁵⁰ If this is so, then why would the Church formally censure a baptized non-communing member? What would its purpose be? Since according to this view, “Faith is an indispensable condition of the benefit of discipline.”⁵¹

5. The Subjects of Excommunication

Here it is argued that only those who partake at the Lord’s Table can be the proper subjects of formal discipline, because if there has been no communion, then there can be no ex-communion. In light of this, Thornwell taught that excommunication removed the offender from the communion of saints, in the sense that they were, for an indefinite period of time, denied access to the Lord’s Table.⁵² As a non-communicant baptized member had never had this privilege, it could therefore not be taken from him. This was also the position of the 1578 Synod of Dordt, where it was asserted “therefore excommunication shall not be used except against those to whom the covenant of God is sealed anew through the Lord’s Supper.”⁵³ Voetius also argued on this basis against the formal discipline of baptized members, “I don’t see how the actual church discipline can be applied to them, in view of the fact that they never by profession of faith in the church covenant were admitted to the Lord’s Supper fellowship. How then could they be excluded from it?”⁵⁴

6. The Nature of Excommunication.

We saw above that Thornwell denied the propriety of disciplining non-communicant members because he considered excommunication as a removal of the right to participation at the Lord’s Table. His view at this point appears to be behind the statement in the revised Book of Discipline, but it was not peculiar to him in the American debates of this period. In the debate between Rev. George D. Armstrong and ‘Old School’ in the Central Presbyterian Periodical (1860-61), Armstrong argued for a similar position.⁵⁵

In distinction to this, Dabney argued that excommunication excluded someone not only from the Lord’s Table, but from the Church itself, and put them on the same footing as a heathen man, i.e., the unbaptized world, or in Old Testament terms, as the uncircumcised.⁵⁶ Thornwell considered this view ‘absurd’⁵⁷ and argued that if this were the case, an excommunicated person who repented would have to be re-baptized to enter Church communion again, and then we would all be Anabaptists!⁵⁸ While there is a degree to which Thornwell and Dabney are talking past each other in their debates, there is also a real difference in how they view excommunication.

Arguments in Favor of the Formal Discipline of Baptized Members

The view we are arguing for is that baptized members are the proper subjects of ecclesiastical discipline up to, and including, excommunication. To make our case, we will look at each of the previous arguments in turn and give a response to establish the position.

1. The Church is not a Voluntary Society.

To Thornwell, the voluntary nature of the Church was an aspect of her glory,⁵⁹ but we contend that he did not get that view from Scripture. The Church is the visible kingdom and covenant people of God. God Himself has sovereignly determined those He would include in it, and therefore whom we should recognize as members. God appeared to Abraham and declared, in Gen. 17:1, “I am almighty God.” He sovereignly and unilaterally established His covenant with Abraham and his seed and did not wait for Isaac’s choice before He included him in it, held out its promises to him or, as in the case of v. 14, threatened its sanctions. In the same way, the baptized child in the New Testament Church does not choose whether he will be born into God’s covenant, nor can he choose to opt out of the sanctions of that covenant because he did not voluntarily agree to them. These sanctions are administered through the discipline of the Church, including his being cut off (excommunicated) for breaking the covenant.

To take an analogy from civic life, a citizen cannot avoid the penalties of the law of the country he was born in because he never personally chose to live under them. Dabney argues from this, “Now it is just as much God’s ordinance for mankind that his people shall live under ecclesiastical government, and that their children shall be subjected to ecclesiastical jurisdiction by birth. They have no option allowed them by God….”⁶⁰

The Church is not a voluntary society, but it is a tragic irony that we will frequently hear the argument that it is, not from the pen of godly theologians, but from the lips of the very people we are writing about – erring baptized members. They refuse the calls of their elders, reject the letters of their Pastor, and the formal citations of their Kirk Session on this very basis, saying, “I never joined your church. I never asked for your care. Please do not contact me again.”

2. Baptized members do not have all privileges of membership, but are under Church discipline.

We saw how the argument was proposed that because baptized members do not automatically have the right to all the privileges of Church membership, e.g., the Lord’s Table, it does not follow that they are the subjects of formal disciplinary process. Additionally, if a profession of faith is required for communing at the table, it should not be thought strange if the same condition is requirement of formal Church discipline. It is our view that this argument does not follow for the following reasons:

a) Scriptural:

Scripture explicitly places a condition on coming to the Lord’s Table. Paul makes personal self-examination and an ability to discern the Lord’s body a precondition (1 Cor 11:28-29) of partaking of the Lord’s Supper. God also gives the keys of the kingdom to the elders of the Church, to open and shut the privilege of Communion to people on the basis of a credible profession of faith (part of this will require testing their knowledge to discern the Lord’s body), but Scripture places no such explicit stipulation on baptized members, in regard to being subject to Church discipline (Matt. 16:19; 18:18; 1 Cor. 4:1).

b) Analogical:

If we look again to civic life, we find different levels of privilege and responsibility given to citizens of a nation. Dabney highlights this while pointing out all citizens are subject to the law and judicial penalty: “In the state, all citizens are not entitled to all grades of privilege, nor liable to all kinds of public duty… but all are alike subject to those general laws which prosecute crime judicially.”

To this it might be replied that the analogy does not fit, and the Church is more like a school for her baptized members where there is no judicial prosecution. Dabney responds, “There is no school on earth where pupils may break all the rules, and uniformly neglect the instructions, and yet the master have not power to declare their connection with the school severed.”⁶¹

c) Logical

It is argued that while baptized members are not subject to the formal discipline of the Church, they are under her general discipline and nurture, and that consequently they may be admonished and rebuked but not excommunicated. To this the question must be asked, and Koelman asked it of the Voetians,⁶² what is the basis for this distinction? In other words, what right does the Church have to admonish and rebuke its baptized members, but not formally discipline them? Furthermore, how would that general rebuke be any different from and constitute a privilege to the baptized member beyond the general rebuke that might go out to all unbaptized men from the word in their station and circumstances? It appears to be a claim for a distinction without any biblical foundation that reduces the privilege of the baptized to no more than a general admonition of the Word of God.

The argument of equivalence from the stipulated condition for partaking of the Lord’s Supper to the case of formal Church discipline does not hold for the reasons above, and therefore we reject the claim that because baptized members are not automatically entitled to all privileges of Church membership, they are therefore not under formal discipline until they profess faith.

3. Administration of Church Discipline is not based on the presumed regeneracy of the subject.

Thornwell articulated this vividly. For him, Church discipline is for the living and not for the dead; therefore, you may as well tie a corpse to a post and whip it as discipline a baptized non-communing member.⁶³

There is much that could be said in response to this, including pointing out his assumption of the unregeneracy of all baptized non-communing members, but the thing we would highlight is that the argument is in the end self-defeating, especially when it comes to excommunication. It defeats itself because, if discipline is predicated on the presence of life, and excommunication is the declaration that the person is not to be regarded as a Christian but a heathen man and a publican, then the end of the process is a presumption of non-regeneration; which means that in retrospect, the whole basis for the disciplinary process crumbles. To put it in Thornwell’s terms, all along you have been whipping a corpse. Indeed, in a strange statement Thornwell seems to concede the point himself, saying, “When men show by their contumacy that they were not sons, they are then cut off from the Church, on the very ground that they are incapable of discipline.”⁶⁴, ⁶⁵

Here he seems to detach excommunication from discipline, so that the end of the process is an announcement that such people cannot really be disciplined, or that their discipline has failed. They are, according to Thornwell, “cut off,” or we might say disciplined, on the basis “that they are incapable of discipline,” which does not make a whole lot of sense. This is not how the Bible views discipline. In Scripture, ecclesiastical discipline is the application of the rules of God’s Word to those God tells us to include as members of his Church, in a kingdom that Jesus tells us is mixed. It follows from this that we do not baptize children on the presumption they are regenerate, nor do we admit someone into communicant membership on the presumption they are regenerate, but on the basis of a credible profession of faith; and so we do not discipline any member – baptized or communicant – on the basis that they are regenerate. We include them in God’s Church and hold them to God’s standard.

4. The Purpose of Church Discipline.

Associated with the previous point and the idea that Church discipline is only for the spiritually alive (and the assumption that baptized members are not), it is claimed that non-communing members should not be disciplined because such discipline is never a means of conversion.⁶⁶ Again, there appears to be a logical force to this argument. But if it were true, then the Church should not excommunicate anyone. Or, more specifically, we should never see excommunication as a means of the recovery of the individual who is being declared by that censure a non-Christian. When a communing member is excommunicated, we are not simply saying he is backslidden and needs to come back to the Lord. The Church declares him to be apostate and judicially handed over to Satan, yet with mercy in mind too (1 Cor. 5:4-5; 1 Tim 1:20).

With this understanding, Dabney asks, if the Spirit may use discipline to recover a backsliding believer (and we could add, the recovery of an apostate, false professing, believer), why could he not use the Church’s discipline to awaken a delinquent baptized member?⁶⁷ Calvin, while not explicitly referring to our case, notes that one of the ends of Church discipline is the awakening of the one to whom it is applied: “The third purpose is that those overcome by shame for their baseness begin to repent. They who under gentler treatment would have become more stubborn, so profit by chastisement of their own evil as to be awakened when they feel the rod.”⁶⁸

The Canons of Dordt also state that “Grace is conferred through admonitions….”.⁶⁹ If this is so, may we not argue from the lesser to the greater that this could be said, not only of admonition, but of the whole disciplinary process of the Church, including the suspension and excommunication of the offender? I believe we can, and that this is of immense importance, because the whole disciplinary process of the Church is then a spiritual privilege granted to the baptized member, and if the Church denies its application, it robs them of a great covenant mercy in failing to employ a means that may be used by God to bring them to their senses.

5. The Nature and Subjects of Excommunication

We have learned that the debate frequently hinges on a broader or narrower view of excommunication. Does this only apply to communing members and refer to the Lord’s Supper? Or does it refer to all members of the Church and the removal from the communion of saints in the visible Church?

We contend that Scripture supports the latter because in the first place, baptized members are members of the Church. In the end this is what the debate is about. Do our children belong to the Church? Are they members of the Church? Are they under her authority? The Bible answers ‘yes’ to all these questions.

Secondly, baptized members are in the covenant; they are included in its promise and are marked by its sign and seal. We are warranted with the Apostle Paul to view them as federally holy (1 Cor 7:14), distinct from and therefore not of the world.⁷⁰

Thirdly, baptized members can break that covenant of which they are members. This was clearly the case in the Old Testament when something concrete was broken (Gen. 17:14). The book of Hebrews makes plain that covenant breaking remains a reality for baptized members of the New Testament Church, and warns us that the consequences in the present dispensation are even more severe than the former (Heb. 3:7-4:7; 10:26-31).

In the fourth place, this covenant breaking in the Old Testament was sanctioned with excommunication; “That soul shall be cut off from my people” (Gen. 17:14). This happened in the case of Ishmael when he mocked Isaac, the child of the covenant (Gen. 21:9-12). It happened again when Esau despised his birthright and was cut out of the spiritual inheritance of Israel (Gen. 25, 27).

Furthermore, excommunication functions in the same way in the New Testament, where it is not simply losing the privilege of the Lord’s Table for an indefinite period of time, but being cast out of the people of God and judicially given the status of the heathen man and publican (Matt. 18:17).

Now all these things are not merely applicable to communicant members, but to all members of the Church. The baptized member, while he may not have communed with Christ at the Lord’s Table, has communed with Christ outwardly in the means of grace. In Jesus’ picture of the true vine, in John 15, he is one of the branches externally connected to Him but void of that vital union of life. According to Heb. 6:4-8, he has been in some sense enlightened, tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come. He is even said to be in an outward sense ‘sanctified’, or set apart by the blood of Jesus Christ (Heb. 10:29). He cannot excommunicate himself from this ecclesiastical communion because Christ put the keys of the kingdom in the hand of elders; they open and shut. Therefore, a delinquent baptized member should be subject to the formal discipline of the Church up to and including the censure of excommunication.

Many of the Church’s children have testified to the weight of these truths in their own lives. The thought of their covenant privilege and the fearful reality of covenant breaking were prominent in their own spiritual experience. Such truths weighed heavily on them, and they knew it would be worse for them than for Sodom in the day of judgment if they rejected these blessings. What we are dealing with here is baptized members throwing all such privilege away like trash – and will the Church not act? Will she not warn? Will she not bring the sanctions of God’s covenant administration in this world to bear on such members? Oh that she would, and that it would be blessed to the good of many souls.

Footnotes

1
By Covenant of Grace, we understand God’s covenant made with sinners in time, in which He promises to be their God and the God of their children after them, through Christ the mediator, who they must receive by faith alone. This covenant is distinct from the eternal Covenant of Redemption that God the Father makes with His Son and all His elect people in Him. These two covenants stand in relation to each other in that the Covenant of Grace is God’s appointed means in time to bring all those given to the Son in the Covenant of Redemption to faith in Him. ↩︎
2
Westminster Confession of Faith (Glasgow: Free Presbyterian, 2003), 25:2, 106-107. ↩︎
3
This movement was born out of a reaction against the abdication of parental authority and the duty of training children in the Christian home, and the age segregation of the Church through the proliferation of youth groups, Sunday schools, etc. ↩︎
4
A practical example of this would be that the Church is not seen to have any direct authority over her children. This is exacerbated by the fact that many churches in this movement are Baptist where the children are not counted members and thus not subject to ecclesiastical authority. It is thus an attempt to integrate the family into the Church on the foundation of a theology that denies the children of the family membership of the Church. ↩︎
5
John B. Romeyn, “The Duty of the Church in the Instruction and Discipline of Her Baptized Children,” in Home, The School and the Church; or the Presbyterian Education Repository, Vol. V, (ed. C. Van Rensselaer), 27-68. ↩︎
6
Romeyn, The Duty of the Church, 39. ↩︎
7
The report cites Epist. 159, to Marcellinus. ↩︎
8
Romeyn, The Duty of the Church, 40. ↩︎
9
Ibid. ↩︎
10
W. van’t Spijker, ‘De Tucht over Doopleden’, Ambtelijk Contact, 1 November 1982, 6-9, https://bit.ly/2BLf920 (accessed 21 February 2019). Quoted here is the English translation by Pastor L. W. Bilkes of the Free Reformed Churches of North America, https://bit.ly/2Tar4QS (accessed 21 February 2019). See also Pieter VanderMeyden, Church Discipline of Baptized Members, in Officebearers Journal, Vol. 1, Spring 2018, 15-36. Theological Education Committee, Free Reformed Churches of North America. ↩︎
11
Van Spijker, ‘De Tucht‘ ↩︎
12
Martin Micron was assistant minister to à Lasco in the Dutch Refugees Church in London. In 1554 he published a work in Dutch entitled “Christian Ordinances of the Dutch Refugees Churches in London.” Van’t Spijker quotes from this work. ↩︎
13
Van’t Spijker, ‘De Tucht‘. ↩︎
14
The 1578 Synod of Dordrecht, met from June 2-18, and was the first properly National Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church. ↩︎
15
Van’t Spijker, ‘De Tucht‘. ↩︎
16
Ibid. ↩︎
17
Van’t Spijker comments “Voetius expresses some restriction with regard to the membership of non-communicant members. For this he quotes William Ames (Medulla I, 32, 13): “Nevertheless the young children are not complete members of the Church in the sense that they can participate in the actions of fellowship or partake of all privileges of the church.” ↩︎
18
The form for the administration of infant baptism in the Dutch Reformed Churches first appeared in a 1566 edition of the Dutch Psalter edited by Petrus Dathenus. ↩︎
19
Van’t Spijker, ‘De Tucht’. ↩︎
20
The 1834 Secession from the established Dutch Church (NHK) was led by a number of young ministers (de Cock, Scholte, van Raalte, Brummelkamp). They publicly opposed the toleration of heresies within the NHK together with the imposition of man-made uninspired materials of praise into the public worship of God. They also promoted a return to the Reformed Confessions and vowed to return to the national Church when it returned to its former adherence to these things. The years that followed were confusing and a proliferation of small groups appeared. Two of these finally united and formed the Christelijke Gereformeerded Kerk in 1869. ↩︎
21
The Synod of the Gereformerde Kerk. ↩︎
22
“The synod, upon thorough deliberation, is of the opinion that no specific rules should be laid down for this. Rather, it should be left to the modest judgment of the councils to deal with them in meekness as faithfully and edifyingly as possible.” Quoted in Van’t Spijker, ‘De Tucht’. ↩︎
23
In 1892, part of the Christelijke Gereformeerde Kerk joined with the Doleantie to form the Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland. The Dolleantie, led by Abraham Kuyper, had left the national Church in 1886. ↩︎
24
This is reproduced in Van’t Spijker, ‘De Tucht‘. ↩︎
25
The Directory for Public Worship of God, in Westminster Confession of Faith (Free Presbyterian, Glasgow, 2003), 382-383. ↩︎
26
Romeyn, The Duty of the Church, 36. The Act referred to is Act Sess. 7. 3. August 1642 in “The Acts Of The General Assemblies Of The Church of Scotland From The Year 1638 to the Year 1649. Inclusive” https://www.gutenberg.org/files/28957/28957-pdf.pdf (accessed 23 February 2019). The Act reads ‘The Assembly would enjoyn every Presbyterie to proceed against Non-communicants, whether Papists or others, according to the Act of Parliament made thereanent. And suchlike, that Acts of Parliament against prophaners of the Sabbath be put to execution.’ In a footnote Romeyn states, “A similar rule is contained in the discipline of the French Reformed Churches, chap. 12, can. 11, Quick’s Synodicon, Vol. 1.” ↩︎
27
Walter Steuart Pardovan, Collections and Observations Concerning the Worship, Discipline and Government of the Church of Scotland, (Edinburgh: W. Gray, 1770), 215. Pardovan writes “When minors are convened before church judicatories, their curators are not to be cited as before civil courts, though they may be acquainted therewith, that their pupils may receive suitable advice and instruction from them. A minor, that is a male past fourteen, and a female past twelve years of age, may be called before church judicatories, when guilty; as for pupils under that age, it will be rare if ever they be concerned as delinquents, except “ubi militia supplet ætatem -,” that is, where strength of nature is as far advanced in them as it useth to be in others of riper years.”young children are not complete members of the church in the sense that they can participate in the actions of fellowship or partake of all privileges of the church.” ↩︎
28
The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, (Philadelphia 1789), 175. ↩︎
29
Old School, ‘The Relation of Baptized Children to the Church–No 1,’ Central Presbyterian (Periodical) 5.41, October 13, 1856, 165. ↩︎
30
Romeyn, The Duty of the Church, 27. This is quotes in and editorial introduction to Romeyn’s report. ↩︎
31
Ibid., 28. ↩︎
32
This is a reference to the Jewish tradition of religious initiation when a boy undergoes his Bar-mitzvah. ↩︎
33
During this time, in 1837, the Presbyterian Church split into its Old School and New School factions. The subsequent debate over the revision of The Book of Discipline took place in the Old School Assembly, but the discussion of the matter extended far beyond Church courts, with articles appearing in many Presbyterian and other religious periodicals. ↩︎
34
Revised Book of Discipline Prepared by the Committee of the General Assembly, August 1858, 25. Accessed at http://www.pcahistory.org/bco/pcusa/1858/rod.pdf. The original book of order had stated, “All baptized persons are members of the church, are under its care, and subject to its government and discipline; and when they have arrived at the years of discretion, they are bound to perform all the duties of church members.” ↩︎
35
Charles Hodge, Discussions in Church Polity (New York: Scriber & Sons, 1878), 215-218. ↩︎
36
Their exchange can be found respectively in Robert L. Dabney, Discussions, Vol. 2. (Sprinkle, 1982), 312-400. See also, James Henley Thornwell, The Collected Writings of James Henley Thornwell, Vol. 4 Ecclesiastical, (Banner of Truth, 1986), 298-380. ↩︎
37
Southern Presbyterian Review, Vol. 12, No.3, Columbia S.C., April 1859, 378-406. See also Vol. 13, No. 1, 1860, 1-39. We will refer to these articles as they are reproduced in ‘The Collected Writings.’ ↩︎
38
The original exchange is entitled “The Relation of Baptized Children to the Church” published in “The Central Presbyterian” Vol. 5. No’s. 39-55, 1860, Vol. 6, No. 1, 1861. ↩︎
39
Peter J. Wallace., “The Bond of Union”: The Old School Presbyterian Church and the American Nation, 1837-1861, Doctoral Dissertation (The University of Notre Dame, 2004), 600, https://curate.nd.edu/show/db78tb11n3k (accessed 21 February 2019). ↩︎
40
The Book of Church Order of the Presbyterian Church in America, 6th Edition, 27-2, (Lawrenceville, GA. 2009), www.pcahistory.org/bco/rod/27/02.html (accessed 21 February 2019). ↩︎
41
The Book of Church Order of the Presbyterian Church (Willow Grove, PA), 87, www.opc.org/BCO/BD.html (accessed 21 February 2019). ↩︎
42
The Book of Discipline of the Presbyterian Reformed Church, article 70, https://presbyterianreformed.org/about-us/government/68-87-book-discipline/ (accessed 21 February 2019). ↩︎
43
Van’t Spijker, ‘De Tucht‘. The Independentists had Congregationalist leanings, pressing the autonomy of the local Church in the federation and also the authority of the congregation in relation to the local elders. ↩︎
44
Ibid. ↩︎
45
Wallace, “The Bond of Union“, 620. ↩︎
46
Thornwell’s view of the Church raises concerns in other related aspects. He describes the Church as ‘the complete realization of the decree of election’ and so seems to conflate the covenant and election. Thornwell, Collected Writings, Vol. 4, 350-351. Further he goes on to define the visible church as “the society or congregation of those who profess true religion,” leaving out their children which the West- minster Confession of Faith is careful to include (WCF 25:2). ↩︎
47
This is assuming a majority view in the history of the Reformed Church over against the doctrine of Paedo-Communion. ↩︎
48
Thornwell, Collected Writings, Vol. 4, 328. ↩︎
49
Ibid. ↩︎
50
Ibid., 329, “Discipline is for the living and not for the dead. It is not an ordinance for conversion, but an ordinance for repentance.” Here Thornwell denies that discipline can be used in any sense as a means of conversion. In so doing he employs the term repentance in a narrow way that excludes it from initial conversion. He likewise speaks of conversion in a strict sense relating to the beginning of the Christian life. Others speak of conversion more broadly as the fruit of regeneration with initial and continuing repentance and faith as component parts. ↩︎
51
Ibid. ↩︎
52
Ibid., 324, 343. ↩︎
53
Van’t Spijker, ‘De Tucht‘. ↩︎
54
Ibid. ↩︎
55
“The Relation of Baptized Children to the Church,” in “The Central Presbyterian,” Vol 5, No’s. 39-55, 1860, Vol 6, No. 1, 1861. Armstrong argues that baptized members are not in the communion of the Church and so the excommunication of non-communicants is impossible (5:39; 5:40; 5:41). ↩︎
56
Brian T. Wingard, As the Lord Puts Words in her Mouth: The Supremacy of Scripture in the Ecclesiology of James Henley Thornwell and its Influence upon the Presbyterian Churches of the South, Doctoral Dissertation (Westminster Theological Seminary, 1992), 185. ↩︎
57
Thornwell, Collected Writings, Vol 4. 339. ↩︎
58
Ibid., 343-344. ↩︎
59
Wallace, “The Bond of Union“. ↩︎
60
Dabney, Discussions, Vol. 2, 386. ↩︎
61
Dabney, Discussions, Vol 2, 386, 388. ↩︎
62
Van’t Spijker, ‘De Tucht‘. ↩︎
63
Thornwell, Collected Writings, Vol 4 ↩︎
64
Thornwell, Collected Writings, Vol 4, 328. ↩︎
65
Wallace, “The Bond of Union”, 603. He points out the inconsistency of Thornwell’s reasoning at this point saying “Excommunication, for Thornwell, was not really discipline at all, but the declaration that discipline had failed.” ↩︎
66
Thornwell, Collected Writings, Vol 4, 329. ↩︎
67
Thornwell, Discussion, Vol 2, 390. ↩︎
68
John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4:12:5, Vol. 2. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1967), 1233. He goes on to refer this to 2 Thess. 3:14 and 1 Cor. 5:5. ↩︎
69
Canons of Dordrecht, Third and fourth head, article 17, in “Three Forms of Unity and Ecumenical Creeds,” Mission Committee of the Protestant Reformed Churches of North America, 1999, 63. ↩︎
70
Thornwell speaks starkly of the status of baptized members that they are “in the Church but of the world.” In relation to them being of the world he continues, “As of the world, they are included in the universal sentence of exclusion which bars the communion of saints against the impenitent and profane.” See Collected Writings, Vol. 4, 347. This appears to be Thornwell’s default assumption of the spiritual status of non-communing members and baptized children. His Covenant Theology certainly seems to take him toward a more Baptistic view than an historical Reformed view of the Church and her children. ↩︎

baptism church discipline excommunication

The Discipline of Baptized MembersAre Baptized Members Subject to the Judicial Process of the Church?

The Question Stated